"I'd just like to know why she has such hard feelings to me," [Monty Johnson] said. "They say they're for poor people."

But apparently, you're nobody until Elizabeth Edwards dislikes you.

The Orange County Republicans sent out a release denouncing Edwards' remarks. Newspapers from as far as Ireland have picked up the story. On Tuesday, "Inside Edition" sent a film crew to his single-wide trailer in rural Orange County that sits near the Edwards' $6 million, 29,000-square-foot estate.

Johnson didn't rebut Edwards' comments. He's a proud member of the Grand Old Party and owns a 9 mm handgun he said he's not afraid to use.

What got his goat, he says, was Edwards' calling his 42-acre property "slummy."

Johnson rents one of the two buildings at the front of his property to a mechanic. The gravel lot is strewn with cars waiting to get fixed.

[...]

Johnson thinks the Edwardses don't like him because he put up a sign along Old Greensboro Road that reads: "Go Rudy Giuliani 2008." The couple has to read it every time they pull into their winding driveway.

He also left an abandoned house facing their property. But he said he was born there and doesn't have the money to fix it up or the heart to tear it down.

Still, he said he doesn't know why Edwards, who recently announced her breast cancer had recurred, would badmouth him.

But - but - I thought John and Elizabeth cared about the poor and downtrodden. They don't seem too concerned or sympathetic to Monty Johnson.